The Gardner Heist Investigation In The Media (Part II)
A Call To Inaction Crowd Sourcing The Gardner
Heist Eve Surveillance Video
There
had been “an exhaustive re-examination.” Investigators
“had tried really hard” but as Massachusetts U. S. Attorney Ortiz told the Boston
Globe: “We have this big
question mark as to who this individual is. The hope is that someone will
recognize the unauthorized visitor . . . and provide some fruitful
leads that will help us figure out where the paintings are, lead to some
information, to some people we haven’t thought of before.”
The FBI seemed to be on board with their fellow federal crime
fighting agency. Part of the statement
announcing the release of the video also read:
“This latest request for the public’s assistance illustrates
the FBI’s continued commitment to the Gardner investigation, it stated, quoting Vincent
Lisi, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Boston, whose retirement from the Bureau with a month's notice had just been announced a week earlier.
The release of the never-before-seen video from the museum’s
security system “sparked an Internet frenzy” the
Boston Globe reported. The video itself
became part of the cultural landscape. It was became subject in the work of artist Kota Ezawa art in an exhibit shown in galleries and museums from
Massachusetts to California;
“The project really came together when the FBI released
surveillance footage from the time of the heist in late summer of 2015,” Ezawa said. The Japanese-German artist created a black-and-white animated video based on the grainy video
recording of the night before the robbery. “[That] gave my project a kind of
document film component and a connection to an ongoing investigation.”
On its own the video had captured for a short time captured fleeting attention
of the public in an ever more crowded field of news stories, viral videos and online media, but did nothing to capitalize on the opportunity or sustain the public's interest.
It is perhaps worthwhile to compare the call to action by the
FBI on the press release for the social media campaign
that quickly ensnared Whitey Bulger with the one from the Gardner Heist eve Surveillance
release:
Whitey Bulger Social Media Campaign Press Release
FBI Announces a Unique
Publicity Campaign to Locate a Top Ten Fugitive
Anyone with information about Greig or Bulger is asked to
contact the FBI by calling 1-800- CALL- FBI, via the Internet at https://tips.fbi.gov, or by calling their local FBI office, or the nearest
U.S. Embassy or Consulate.
Gardner Heist Video Social Media Campaign Press Release
Historic Footage Connected
to Gardner Museum Burglary Released - Public Assistance Sought
Anyone with information regarding the video should call the
FBI at 617-742-5533 or the Isabella Gardner Museum at 617-278-5114.
Most people would be getting this information from newspapers,
television news and related websites. But, the initial press release sets the tone, and consistent with the bland press release the FBI continued to downplayed the significance of the videos release from the very beginning. The Gardner Heist press release is passive voice. It does not even say by whom the video is being released. The crime itself has been downgraded from a robbery to a burglary.
On the very day it was released, the FBI
assistant special agent who has overseen the Gardner investigation since 2013, Pete Kowenhoven, reiterated a statement he made back on March 18, 2015, in an interview with Karen Andseron of WCVB, that the two thieves were "currently dead." Kowenhoven would not not even go so far as to say the man in the video was a suspect or a person of interest. “Maybe this individual who was in the museum had some information,” he said to the Boston Globe around the same time.
According the Legal Professionals new site Law 360, however, reported that "While
re-examining evidence in the case, federal prosecutor Robert Fisher discovered video footage from the night before the burglary that showed an unauthorized
visitor being let into the museum by a security guard.” If the FBI was aware of
its existence, why was the U.S. Attorney’s office for Massachusetts not aware
of it? Why had it taken a quarter century for someone to ask Rick Abath who it
was that he had let into the museum around midnight on the night before the robbery.
“We are focused on getting the paintings back is the
inevitable rejoinder to any thought provoking question who carried out the
crime and how they did it beyond the small vague unsubstantiated theory of local toughs, put forth by the FBI and amplified by the Gardner Museum and the media.
In March of 2018, Ulrich Boser author of the 2009 Best Seller the Gardner Heist said in Episode 4 of the Empty Frames podcast: I’m less certain that we have the two individuals who walked in that night as much as we have that clustering...we have Lenny DiMuzio, George Reissfelder, David Turner, you’ve got the crewish, I feel good about, but Boser has never offered any evidence.
And there is much that goes against these parties being involved. DiMuzio was a burglar and Reissfelder a bad check writer. They were not known to be robbers. Both are too old to have been the actual culprits who entered the museum. And as for David Turner, he was too young, and when faced with decades in prison for another crime, he still did not provide any information about the Gardner Heist.
There was a 27 year old eye witness, with a Master's Degree, one of the guards, and he said that the robbers were in their late twenties to early thirties. DiMuzio was in his early 40's and Reissfelder his early 50's. David Turner was only 22. Yet Gardner Heist author Ulrich Boser and member of his "crew" relegate anyone who does not subscribe to the local toughs theory as part of "that lower tier of somewhere between crockpot and mildly plausible" as he put it on Episode Two of Empty Frames.
In March of 2018, Ulrich Boser author of the 2009 Best Seller the Gardner Heist said in Episode 4 of the Empty Frames podcast: I’m less certain that we have the two individuals who walked in that night as much as we have that clustering...we have Lenny DiMuzio, George Reissfelder, David Turner, you’ve got the crewish, I feel good about, but Boser has never offered any evidence.
And there is much that goes against these parties being involved. DiMuzio was a burglar and Reissfelder a bad check writer. They were not known to be robbers. Both are too old to have been the actual culprits who entered the museum. And as for David Turner, he was too young, and when faced with decades in prison for another crime, he still did not provide any information about the Gardner Heist.
There was a 27 year old eye witness, with a Master's Degree, one of the guards, and he said that the robbers were in their late twenties to early thirties. DiMuzio was in his early 40's and Reissfelder his early 50's. David Turner was only 22. Yet Gardner Heist author Ulrich Boser and member of his "crew" relegate anyone who does not subscribe to the local toughs theory as part of "that lower tier of somewhere between crockpot and mildly plausible" as he put it on Episode Two of Empty Frames.
This might well be the only case where the
investigators assert that determining more about the identity of the
perpetrators is a distraction or incompatible with solving the crime. That the public, like Ulrich Boser, and the other authorized vendors of the Gardner Museum story, should be satisfied with an explanation not even about a specific gang any longer but a "cluster" of individuals and with no evidence to support their involvement.
The friends and family of the people who were tied up in
the basement. The friends and family of people who want to see Rick Abath’s
name cleared, or not cleared as the case may be interested are interested in knowing the specific names. There are those who believe the crimes against people were serious, just as were the crime against property, or at least worthy of some consideration. Members of the public have a right or at least a reasonable desire to know who the people are who are responsible for the expenditure of millions of tax dollars in the recovery effort.
There were also serious threats against the museum and museum staff as a direct result of the robbery that might well have been from the robbers themselves looking to make a deal: "We also were threatened by criminals who wanted attention from the FBI. Nobody knew really what kind of a cauldron we were in," Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley, said again in 2013, though she had never revealed anything about the threats until nearly two decades later and it was never reported in the media though the museum was evacuated on more than one occasion. The FBI advised Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley that she should alter her route to work for months after the robbery.
For many people just getting the paintings back is not sufficient, nor is a recovery their prime motivation in their interest in the case. And the thinking that finding out who the thieves are is somehow a separate issue or even incompatible with the return of the paintings will never be satisfactorily explained.
Richard DesLauriersz, the FBI special agent in charge of the Boston office said that knowing the identity of the culprits has “been opening other doors’’ as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork. It stands to reason then that expanding the awareness of who these people are would likely open additional doors as well.
There were also serious threats against the museum and museum staff as a direct result of the robbery that might well have been from the robbers themselves looking to make a deal: "We also were threatened by criminals who wanted attention from the FBI. Nobody knew really what kind of a cauldron we were in," Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley, said again in 2013, though she had never revealed anything about the threats until nearly two decades later and it was never reported in the media though the museum was evacuated on more than one occasion. The FBI advised Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley that she should alter her route to work for months after the robbery.
For many people just getting the paintings back is not sufficient, nor is a recovery their prime motivation in their interest in the case. And the thinking that finding out who the thieves are is somehow a separate issue or even incompatible with the return of the paintings will never be satisfactorily explained.
Richard DesLauriersz, the FBI special agent in charge of the Boston office said that knowing the identity of the culprits has “been opening other doors’’ as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork. It stands to reason then that expanding the awareness of who these people are would likely open additional doors as well.
There is a legitimate and also inevitable interest in not
just the art recovery but also the identities of the people responsible. Putting
information out there that only involves
the possible planning and execution of the crime, and
then the same day saying: We are exclusively interested in the recovery of the paintings, without somehow relating the recovery of the art to the video footage, can only lead to cynicism,
confusion and a disincentive for anyone who might consider taking a serious look
at newly released evidence..
The FBI could tap that interest in the whodunnit in order to generate
interest, which potentially could lead to information that would lead to the paintings. Obviously this is what the U.S. States
Attorney believed, and is why they released the surveillance footage in the first place.
“Brian Kelly, a former prosecutor who oversaw the
investigation in the US attorney’s office in Boston, said investigators apparently believe the video is
significant enough now to release it to the public.”
But the U.S. Attorney’s office delegated the carrying out of the
crowd-sourcing campaign to the FBI, who either did not see the potential in releasing it, or saw
some significant downsides, given the inaction behind the effort.
To anyone outside of the FBI, from the public to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office, the potential benefit of working the criminal apprehension side of the case, through the surveillance footage, seems crystal clear. The FBI's reservations about the initiative have never been explained publicly, and not
from a failure of reporters to ask. The only possible explanation is
that there is something about the robbery that the FBI had not shared with the
public or even the then U.S. Attorney at the time the video was released
on August 6, 2015.
